HOME PAGE SUBSCRIPTIONS, Print Editions, Newsletter PRODUCTS READ THE PETROLEUM NEWS ARCHIVE! ADVERTISING INFORMATION EVENTS PETROLEUM NEWS BAKKEN MINING NEWS

Providing coverage of Alaska and northern Canada's oil and gas industry
July 2009

Vol. 14, No. 28 Week of July 12, 2009

BP in Alaska: Building the Trans Alaska Pipeline System

Frank Baker

For Petroleum News

In order to begin construction on the pipeline, Alyeska Pipeline Service Co. needed to put in a road to service its construction. The road would start at the Yukon River, at the end of the 53-mile Elliot Highway from Fairbanks to Livengood, and continue north some 360 miles to the North Slope.

Anticipating an earlier passage of a trans-Alaska pipeline right-of-way permit, tons of road building equipment and camp units were distributed along the proposed route of the haul road beginning in 1969-70. One of the main obstacles on the route was the Yukon River, so ice roads were constructed each winter to keep material supplies moving north.

With receipt of the right-of-way permit in 1974, the project moved into high gear. The logistics of the northward flow that began in the winter of 1974 would dwarf heroic episodes of the past like the Berlin airlift and some great overland efforts in Alaska itself, such as the gold rushes in the 1890s and early 1900s; and some military movements during World War II.

In 83 days, from late January to mid-April 1974, a force that at one point reached 680 workers moved some 34,000 tons of machinery and materials into northern Alaska. This took 671 aircraft flights — a large number of those C-130 Hercules cargo aircraft — and 1,285 trips by truck. Seven moth-balled construction camps were opened and enlarged, and five new camps were built. Five temporary airstrips were built over the snow and ice, to be replaced in spring by a permanent gravel-based runway at each camp. Crews kept at it around the clock in temperatures that dropped as low as minus 68 degrees F.

Michael Baker Jr. Inc. was the firm selected for the planning and civil engineering portion of the road project, which included the first permanent bridge over the Yukon River. The bridge was designed by Nottingham and Associates, of Anchorage. A joint-venture firm, Manson-Osberg-Ghemm, was the construction contractor for the 2,295-foot bridge, which was completed in 1975 at a cost of $30 million.

Haul Road construction officially began in April 1974, and at the peak of the effort, Alyeska and its contractors had more than 3,400 workers deployed over the route, which was divided into eight sections. The sections would be built north and south from a center point until they all connected. Four execution contractors selected for the job were Green Associated and General-Alaska-Stewart, both joint-venture companies; Burgess Construction Co.; and Morrison-Knudsen Co. Inc. Each of these contractors would build two sections.

Supply flights during the winter had just been the beginning. Now a squadron of more than 60 aircraft, ranging from helicopters to big, fixed-wing transports and air tankers, was crisscrossing the skies over northern Alaska in support of the road building effort. More than 127,000 flights were made, an average of about 700 per day. Eight and a half million gallons of fuel were flown in to power the construction equipment and camps. Another 160,000 tons of supplies and material were also transported by air. And, by early summer, barges were being used to take materials directly to Prudhoe Bay.

Road completed in 154 days

Alyeska named Bechtel Inc. of San Francisco as Construction Management Contractor for construction of the road, 29 camps and the pipeline. The following year Alyeska became CMC for the pipeline portion of the work, which included nearly 800 miles of mainline pipe installation, the 12 pump stations and marine Terminal in Valdez.

Trucks carried more than 31 million cubic yards of gravel and another million cubic yards of rock to bring the 28-foot-wide road up to state secondary standards.

Work on the 360-mile gravel road was completed on Sept. 29, 1974, only 154 days after work was started. In 1981 the road was named the Dalton Highway after Alaska engineer James B. Dalton, who was involved in early oil exploration efforts on the North Slope. This 3 million-man-hour, single-summer project was unprecedented in Alaska history.

Pipeline construction gets started

Early cost estimates for the pipeline system alone were about $900,000, but ultimately its cost would soar to nearly $8 billion, primarily as the result of inflation and environmental requirements which caused re-engineering and re-design. Financing such a massive project was mind boggling, and innovative approaches were developed by both BP and Sohio. U.S. insurance companies and pension funds were invited to invest in trans-Alaska oil pipeline bonds. Other companies, like Atlantic Richfield and Exxon, went to corporate bond markets to finance their shares of the pipeline. It was an unusual approach at the time, which today is considered conventional.

Dr. Ken Keep, a retired director for BP Exploration in London who was based in Anchorage during the 1970s, recalled the mood in 1975 during the ramp-up of pipeline activity.

“It was like a 20th century version of the gold rush, with all the trappings of the 20th century,” he said. “If you went along the pipeline route there were camps to house thousands of men and women representing about every skill or specialization imaginable.”

There were 29 temporary camps from Pump Station No. 1 to the terminal camp in Valdez, housing anywhere from a handful to several thousand workers. Each facility ran like a self-sufficient miniature village, with colorful names like Coldfoot, Prospect, Sourdough, Five Mile and Happy Valley.

The average pay for working seven 12s (seven days a week, 12 hours a day) was $1,000 per week for a general laborer. Welders and other skilled crafts generally took in a bit more. Even though money was the big drawing card that kept most pipeliners in the game, the employee turnover rate was about 20 percent.

In Fairbanks, the primary transportation hub for pipeline materials moving north, small apartments rented for more than $600 per month. A cab-over shell mounted on a pickup truck went for about $500 per month. Telephone lines were constantly jammed; grocery stores struggled to keep shelves stocked; school enrollments doubled, and crime rates escalated. To a lesser extent, these impacts were also felt in Anchorage and Valdez.

Pipeline construction during the first part of 1975 was devoted largely to access roads, land clearing operations, workpad construction and placing of vertical support members or VSMs. Ultimately, some 88,000 VSMs would be required for the above-ground portion of the 48-inch mainline. Actual installation of mainline pipe didn’t begin until March 27, 1975, and then moved into high gear. Progress goals for the year were ambitious: By year end Alyeska hoped to have 45 percent of the mainline finished.

The 800-mile pipe laying job was programmed to come along fastest of the system’s three major parts — which included the mainline, pump stations and Valdez Marine Terminal.

Construction and engineering challenges included more than 34 major river crossings, about 800 smaller stream crossings, and three major mountain ranges: the Brooks, Alaska and Chugach. The highest elevation on the line was to be 4,739-foot Atigun Pass in the Brooks Mountain Range. The steepest grade along the line was encountered at Thompson Pass, in the Chugach Range, at 55 degrees.

On another major construction front, Fluor Alaska Inc. was the management contractor responsible for the construction of 12 pump stations. All relevant data from the stations, including line pressures, flow rates and temperatures, would be telemetered to Valdez, where operations would be continuously monitored at the Operational Control Center.

During normal operations, the OCC would also monitor the more than 160 valves along the pipeline and have direct control over the remote gate valves placed strategically near environmentally sensitive areas, such as creeks and rivers.

Overall, the OCC was designed to scan about 2,000 status and alarm points on the pipeline and at the stations, taking a reading from each one every 10 seconds.

Integral to the OCC was a microwave communication system that required building 40 relay stations along the pipeline route, many of which were sited on remote mountain tops. Backing up the microwave network was a satellite system. Each of the line’s 62 remote gate valves was tied into the pump station immediately to its north, and then linked to Valdez via microwave and also by an independent VHF radio channel. In 2008 the OCC was moved to Anchorage to better meet expectations for performance and reliability.

Covering more than 1,000 acres, the Valdez Terminal was a massive project which overnight transformed the fishing port of Valdez into a bustling community. At a cost of about $1.4 billion, the terminal was designed with four berths and tankage to hold a total of 9 million barrels of crude oil. Sophisticated equipment to handle oily ballast water and hydrocarbon vapors from tankers was also installed and later upgraded.

The pace of pipeline construction activity accelerated in 1976 as crews scrambled to complete pipeline and ancillary projects. The last of some 100,000 welds of the 48-inch pipe was made on May 31, 1977, and on June 20 of that year, all of Alyeska’s computer models, studies and analyses would be put to the test.






Petroleum News - Phone: 1-907 522-9469 - Fax: 1-907 522-9583
[email protected] --- http://www.petroleumnews.com ---
S U B S C R I B E

Copyright Petroleum Newspapers of Alaska, LLC (Petroleum News)(PNA)©2013 All rights reserved. The content of this article and web site may not be copied, replaced, distributed, published, displayed or transferred in any form or by any means except with the prior written permission of Petroleum Newspapers of Alaska, LLC (Petroleum News)(PNA). Copyright infringement is a violation of federal law subject to criminal and civil penalties.